TIMES OF INDIA

NEW DELHI: The Delhi high court on Wednesday asked the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and RBI to respond to a PIL alleging unauthorized access, use, and storage of users' Aadhaar and banking information by Google Pay.

A bench of chief justice DN Patel and justice Jyoti Singh issued notice on the petition and sought the stand of Google India Digital Services Private Limited by November 8.

It was hearing a plea by Abhijit Mishra, a financial economist, who said that the "terms and conditions" of Google Pay "explicitly state that the company will be storing the payment instruction details of the parties, including bank accounts and Aadhaar details" even though no permission to undertake such a practice has been issued by the authorities concerned.

Being a private company, Google Pay is not empowered to collect, use and store the Aadhaar and banking information of the citizens, the petitioner added.

In another PIL, the petitioner has claimed that Google's mobile payment app, Google Pay (GPay), was facilitating financial transactions without the requisite authorization from RBI. GPay was acting as a payments system provider in violation of the Payments and Settlements Act as it has no valid authorization from the central bank to carry out such functions, it contended.

In response to the earlier petition, Google India Digital Services had told the court last year that GPay did not require RBI authorization as it is not a payment system operator but a third-party application provider. The RBI, too, had earlier told the court that GPay is a third-party app provider and does not operate any payment systems. It said that's why its operations are not in violation of the Payment and Settlement System Act of 2007.

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